Security Central acquires third central

STATESVILLE, N.C.—Security Central, a wholesale monitoring center based here, purchased Loss Prevention Services, a wholesale central station based in Clemmons, N.C., and will make it a load-balancing third location for the company.

“This one is a great acquisition for us. As far as being in North Carolina, it really shuts the door on competition and competitors in the area,” Caroline Brown, Security Central's VP of business development, told Security Systems News. The $2 million acquisition closed at the end of June, she said, with the transition process getting underway July 1.

LPS, based about 35 miles away from Security Central's headquarters, is a UL-listed CSAA Five Diamond central station. In addition to its headquarters, Security Central operates a live disaster recovery facility in Hickory, N.C., which opened in October 2013.

LPS currently monitors for about 25,000 accounts; Security Central monitors for about 320,000. Brown said that the company is keeping the account bases separate while it upgrades the LPS central and trains the operators on monitoring for a higher volume of accounts.

Security Central will maintain all of the LPS staff at their current facility and its dealers will be adding on their new accounts to LPS' central. The LPS name will remain for now, Brown said, but it will eventually be rebranded under Security Central.

“They currently have similar technology, just on a smaller scale. So, we'll be ramping it up,” Brown said. She estimated that load-balancing between the company's central stations would be implemented after the end of the year.

The acquisition will also benefit Loss Prevention Services' dealers, according to Brown. “To LPS' dealers, it will give them more technology and resources that they haven't had before,” she said. “They'll now be able to do video monitoring, mobile PERS, access control—different sets of things that they haven't had access to.”

Security Central and LPS had been friendly competitors for years, Brown said. “It was just a natural merger and a blend of business, as [LPS owner, Larry McClellan] wanted to retire.”

Both of the monitoring centers use the same automation platform, Bold's Manitou, which helped the transition, according to Brown.

The company is also working on upgrading its central station software, doing a soft rollout of Bold's latest version of Manitou, Neo. The new platform allows dealers to do real-time data entry and see active alarms in the alarm queue, she said.

Brown said that the company will test Neo with some of its dealers, then eventually integrate it with the LPS central station.